I’VE ventured into the world of online auctions only about a half-dozen times, so I’m pretty much an amateur. But it has been mostly a successful experience: I felt the thrill of outbidding and winning, and my items arrived on time and in good shape.

I had a few problems — a desk I won never arrived and my inquiring e-mail messages were never answered. But since I had paid by credit card, I challenged the payment and lost no money in the end.

The second time, my husband and I actually sold a tea set on eBay, but then I did something really stupid — it was so expensive to send to California by United Parcel Service that I shipped it via the Postal Service without requesting delivery notification. The buyer claimed he never got it, it was never returned and so someone, somewhere, is enjoying their tea with a lovely — and free — English silver-plated tea set.

Lesson learned.

I recently checked back into the world of online auctions, and was overwhelmed by the number of choices. Besides the behemoth eBay, there are hundreds of others: general ones like auctions.overstock.com, eBid.net, CQout.com and uBid.com, as well as specialized ones like WineBid.com, LabX.com (for lab and medical equipment), JustBeads.com. Sedo.com (for domain names) and Bid4Assets.com for big-ticket items like real estate.

But as you may have suspected, with the great deals, you can also find yourself taking on something you didn’t bid on — a big headache.

Read more . . .

*Disclaimer: Innovation Toronto is working on an online auction process that will remove most if not all of the problem areas mentioned in this article.  The site is scheduled to go live in March 2010.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Postal strikes leave eBay users in limbo (guardian.co.uk)
• eBay Layoffs Rumored for Thursday (gawker.com)
• EBay profits continue to fall (news.bbc.co.uk)
• It’s a bidder’s travel market (cnn.com)
• eBay sales of Windows 7 party packs halted (news.cnet.com)

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Tags: auction, auctions, CNN, ebay, ebay profits, ebay users, online auction, online auctions, travel market, ubid

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